Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable electronic device that is held by a customer and stores individual information. More particularly the present invention relates to a portable electronic device that is capable of providing a service of adding loyalty points according to a degree of utilization of a store by a customer in a loyalty point system in the retain business.
A special benefit system, called a loyalty point system, has been introduced in recent years into retail stores including supermarkets. This system converts a total amount of money of purchased merchandise into loyalty points each time a customer purchases merchandise. The loyalty points are accumulated. When the accumulated loyalty points reach a prescribed value, a little gift or a coupon is presented for merchandise purchased next time are discounted aiming at the fixation of customers.
This system generally uses card type media including magnetic cards and the like. In other words, a customer who is a member of this system and carrying a membership card issued from a store shows the membership card to a store clerk when purchasing merchandise and pays a price. The shop clerk registers the sales data of the merchandise purchased by that customer it such a merchandise sales data processor as an electronic cash register, a POS terminal, etc. At the same time, the card data of the membership card is read by a card reader/writer provided to the merchandise sales data processor. An accumulated loyalty point up to the last time is recorded on this membership card.
After reading accumulated loyalty point data of a membership card by the card reader/writer, the merchandise sales data processor obtains the total amount of money for merchandise purchased by a customer by processing the registered merchandise sales data and converts the total amount of money into a loyalty point. Then, the loyalty point calculated this time is added to the accumulated loyalty point data read from the membership card and this added value is written into the membership card as an accumulated loyalty point up to the present time by the card reader/writer. This loyalty point system has been programmed as described above.
In Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. Hei 9-212743 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. Hei 6-76124, the application of this system to provide the special service, wherein loyalty points are calculated by changing the point conversion ratio according to the amount of money and by setting the loyalty point conversion at a higher level than the ordinary level, was disclosed.
In the existing system described above, point information is read out of a card that recorded loyalty points and after calculating loyalty point by a card processor that is generally called as a reader/writer, the calculated loyalty point information is recorded on a card. However, there was a possibility of illegally calculating loyalty points by maliciously rewriting a program stored in a card processor by a store clerk. Further, for calculating loyalty points it is necessary to output individual information recorded on a card to an external device (a card processor), there is generated a problem from the viewpoint of security.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a portable electronic device and a loyalty point system capable of calculating loyalty points corresponding to individual information while keeping the security.
According to the present invention, there is provided a portable electronic device for executing a prescribed process according to information related to the selling amount of money that is input from a terminal device, which comprises: a means to store information on a calculation process of loyalty points corresponding to a selling amount of money and a calculated loyalty point; a means to calculate loyalty points using information stored in the storage means according to information on an amount of money of sales that is input from the terminal device; and a means to update the loyalty point stored in the storage means to a loyalty point calculated by the calculation means.
Further, according to the present invention, there is provided a loyalty point system, which comprises a portable electric device including: a storage means to store a prescribed application program for calculating loyalty points corresponding to an amount of money for sales and loyalty point; a means to calculate loyalty point according to the application program stored in the storage means based on the dealt amount of money that is input from the terminal device; a means to update the loyalty point stored in the storage means to the loyalty point calculated by the calculating means; and an output means to output the loyalty points calculated by the calculating means to the terminal device, and the terminal device including a display means to display the loyalty point that is output from the portable electronic device.